I like the story about the fortune teller who told Siddartha's father that he was meant to be a leader or a prophet. Of course we all know how the story ended. Not unlike the young Sigmund Freud whose mother took the baby to meet the friends and neighbors in their Jewish ghetto and an old peasant wo...

Me thinks some (perhaps many) practicing Buddhists or followers of the Dhamma have found convenient little cracks in the sidewalk of life to allow for dispassion and non-attachment where a deeper human impulse would be calling to pay heed under normal circumstances. Of course, some are born and rais...

Ah...this is where it is said by many observers that "Buddhists' are passive - and concern themselves only with own enlightenment and not with the cruelities of the world around them"....have I got that assessement accurate? True, I cannot judge what's in someone's heart but it seems to me we are ce...

Thank you both. Links are very helpful and I see in Buddha's conversation with Rahla the importance of owning up to mistakes made. I am looking at this issue of forgivenss again in light of so many unfortunate circumstances in the world today which are private, personal, family matters and end up in...

Could someone quote sources or passages in the Pali Canon where Buddha spoke specificially about the concept of forgivenss (which was probably not stated as such but the theme itself) or where I might find sources? I am really very curious about this wave of "forgiveness" that is suppose to be a gre...

My own journey started in 2006 reading a whole stack of books on Buddhism to understand this widely expansive "religion". After 3 months of learning about the history, philosophy, time and place of the spread and an overview of the major schools, I still knew nothing about meditating. By 2007 I foun...

Thanks for additional information about the Goenka lineage. It's good to know more about the history and roots of my practice since here in the USA we don't have easy access to monks, nuns, monasteries and teachers. The internet and availability of countless Buddhist resources is beginning to look l...

Great words of wisdom! Thank you and quite right....all that inquiry and continuous skeptism does nothing to reduce my suffering and I am determined to reduce my suffering! Very helpful post. Well said...well said!

Thanks for that link to the topic. I found Bhikkhu Bodhi's article interesting and extremely persuasive but I have ideas of my own about our place in this universe. To see ourselves not as particles but part of a wave is a wonderful metaphor but in the daily business of living we are each accountabl...

James, Sorry I'm a little late getting back to your response. I just figured out how to locate my old posts. I never know where I leave things in a forum of this kind. I don't think anything happens when we die. We just die. No spirit, no energy, no consciousness, no substance or non-substance rises...